This invention relates to emergency evacuation equipment and, in particular, to an inflatable emergency evacuation slide.
The requirement for reliably evacuating airline passengers in the event of an emergency is well-known. Emergencies at take-off and landing often demand swift removal of the passengers from the aircraft because of the potential of injuries from fire, explosion, or sinking in water. A conventional method of quickly evacuating a large number of passengers from an aircraft is to provide multiple emergency exits, each of which is equipped with an inflatable evacuation slide.
A common problem associated with inflatable evacuation slides, however, is that when such slides are deployed in high lateral wind conditions, the wind may cause the slide to “kite” such that the foot end of the slide does not touch the ground, rendering the slide unusable. If the slide lifts off the ground above the airplane's door sill height after full extension, the slide may even block the aircraft exit and prevent safe evacuation of passengers and crew. Accordingly, what is needed is an inflatable evacuation slide that does not develop positive lift and therefore will deploy properly downward toward the ground even under high wind conditions.